Came to do this show you heard about the hacking of twitter, the fact that trump asked out onto facebook get his message out. Facebook got a lot of criticism for a lot of things over the years, and actually wrote a column recently questioning why Mark Zuckerberg has not fact check the president. Tell us your take on this. What is this relationship between facebook and the white house, between facebook and free speech . Im going to throw you a big question to launch you off track you first, thank you for doing this. It is good to connect with you again to some virtual see. Like a lot of things you cant just keys out in the one problem of facebook from its dna and its origins. In the case of trump, obviously he wasnt a factor in the early days. It wasnt something they talked about in the dorm room when they started it up by the time Trump Campaign got rolling in 2015, this became an issue for facebook. It was lathered on top of sort of the messy way they dealt with controversial content. It first came up in 2015 when he posted, trump posted stuff that was antimuslim. It did violate a lot of people inside facebook five the Companies Community standards. What facebook decided not to mess with that, to leave it up even though it might violate he violated the standard even the zuckerberg himself thought it did. Because it was newsworthy and they were not going to tamper with that, and thats when zuckerberg started along the path that he was made explicit right now is he believes politicians should be allowed to say whatever they want so people can judge them by their speech. Even if it is harmful speech. As time goes on this becomes tougher and tougher for facebook to defend because it becomes a bullhorn for toxic speech. Thats the corner zuckerberg painting himself in. Host its so much front and center right now because in recent months a lot of the Big Tech Companies have decided to take a different path on this. This is been a divisive issue and im curious, when i wrote my own book, dont be evil, i really focus on the loophole, the carveout from the mid1990s that give the platforms that were tiny start of entities the freedom to be conservative they wanted to become to be the town square, and not be held liable but steve, we all know as journalist these are giant Media Companies and so im curious as you really dug into this issue both in your previous book and google but on this book on facebook where do you come out . Are these guys the town square anymore or are they Something Else . How should we think about them . Guest i think that 230 gets, which is as you mentioned the regulation, the law that was passed in 1996, willie way before we had these giant platforms way before to encourage these companies. The main issue is what is one of these big platforms going to do, or any of them, going to do to Police Speech to make a safe environment for their users . I think 230 gives them the opportunity to do that and is a question of where they draw the line to do that. Zuckerberg always says hey, you dont want me to be the arbiter of the speech of what is it now, 3 billion people. No, hes not the ideal arbiter but the fact is he built this platform and is the arbiter. Hes the person who has to decide where the line is and what i will say cant be set under platform. This is toxic. Thisll make people feel uncomfortable. This is absolute or borton. Were not quite have pornography on you. Were not going of misinformation about important things like antivaxxers relation which took facebook a long time to ban or information about voting, discourage people from voting which facebook still doesnt do that great a job in fighting even though it says its trying. Or things like dog whistles, like trump quite often sends out. Certainly it makes people of color and comfortable. And makes a platform somewhat itself toxic. Its a tough line to draw but thats what he built. He asked to own up to that. I think that really is the issue, in the fact is hes that doing a great job of it because the more the band speeches expose, it just feels wrong. He is more and more difficulty denying it. Thats why hes constantly taking so many steps back when confronted with the consequences of where his decisions at a given moment. I want to come back to disinformation or and misinformation, free speech in elections the first i want to just note i love the beginning of your book because it painted this picture and you do this so well i have to say i have called you the David Halberstam of tech because you always giving right in peoples lives into details but you also painting this big picture. The picture you paint it was zuckerberg enough group would be adoring entrepreneurs, users around him, almost seeming in that anecdote to me like like d of state. This is something i always think about when i think about facebook. You get at this late in the book, this point at which you decide you want to write this, a bilge and use on one day. Now we know they have more users and the largest countries in the world in many cases. These companies, they. In particular, they almost seem like supranational entities, i think about who studied economic history, india. Did you find that and what did that mean . I definitely found that. As you mentioned i decided to write facebook the inside story when zuckerberg posted in 2015 the end of the summer that a billion people have logged into facebook, on facebook an active users in the 24 hours. Mag. As you mentioned, the total membership of facebook even back then was larger than any country. Now the login numbers are to give it any country is like they are approaching 3 billion people. When i started doing the book, he took me here to get them to sign up to give me cooperation with no Strings Attached trend what i want to hear about that. Go ahead. Guest we went to africa and youre right, he was like head of state and he came to africa from italy where of course he met the prime minister. He met with the pope. This is like what you would expect Mark Zuckerberg to do. A few months before that modi, the head of india. He came to facebook on a state visit. Facebook had a Foreign Policy and he was greeted like a liked of state and almost like some sort of god among the geeks of nigeria. Nigeria has a very active community, a type committed entrepreneurs. Him coming there blew their might. It was a surprise visit. Actually this little Startup Community where he popped in, surprise. They couldnt believe who it was. I realized later that was peak facebook. Only a few months later the 2016 election occurred and that really was the moment where it flipped for facebook and went from this repaired company. They had a lot of issues in the past that stated by them but from that point on it was not skating by. It had and all the things it did come you know, that were toxic, that cause people problems, that compromised peoples of data and privacy. That was when it flipped and the blood became an exercise in understanding how that happened. Maybe go back even more than i thought to the early days of facebook and even the childhood of Mark Zuckerberg to understand how this thing happens. Host thats faceting. For starters i can relate as an author, boy, that the testing when youre megastore change in the middle of your book cycle. You have to scramble. Tragic it wasnt in the middle of the book cycle. And always take she refused to do it and if you much in it gave me the advantage of covering facebook and interviewing that people at facebook, hundreds of interviews there while this thing was happening, while the Companies Reputation was unraveling and watching that process in real time. Host what did you learn about Mark Zuckerberg and his childhood that could inform her help us understand where the company is today . Guest i talked to his parents, and his mother told me a story which i found really resonated with the way facebook unfolded. He grew up in westchester county, not one of the more posh suburbs but a nice suburb, and the Public School he went to go didnt have a whole lot of advanced classes and had great computer program. He wanted to go to private school, take advanced classes. He was interested in the classics, and loved concerts like alexander the great. His mother really want him to go to a nearby private school where he could commute. The oldest sibling in the family was going off to harvard that year. His mother didnt want to lose two kids the same here but he heard about the program at Phillips Exeter which would require boarding and he wanted to go there. His mother said listen, why dont you just like interview the people at horace mann and maybe youll like it . He said im going to interview the people, do that for you, but im going to Phillips Exeter. He went to exeter. That reminded a lot of the decisionmaking that i learned took place at facebook through all of history where quite often something would come up, his lieutenants might bore him against it, this isnt good, good for our users. Sometimes it would take this isnt right, this is kind of wrong, morally wrong, and he would say lets go do it. Its like i thought, exeter. Were going to exeter. Host came from exeter . Guest thats we first became familiar with the program called facebook, social contacts, but the idea that when he makes his mind up, thats it. Since he has total power at facebook he controls the majority of the voting stock and even the board of directors cant overrule him. When he says lets do it, when he says exeter, they go to exeter. Host that is fascinating. Speaking of total power im thinking about this wonderful anecdote and a book about the eyes of sauron. Tell us about the eyes of sauron. Guest e particularly when he was younger he had this had become unbelievably under think that you get question and he wouldnt have to pick you would just stare at you and i think human beings have two blake a certain amount. Sort of the issue i help, right . He seems to defy that sometimes when he looks at you and stares at you. A lot of people told me he had the same problem, roger describes it at length in his account. The first automated in 2006 i asked him softball questions about facebook, how many students are enrolled, et cetera, and he would just look at me. He wouldnt answer the question. I thought whats going on . , in the Twilight Zone . He got better at minimizing that over the years but every so often you get that stare. One of his lieutenants, andrew bosworth, known as boz, described to me the eye of sauron. Host thats really something. You mentioned roger, he was also sorts of me. I encouraged him to write. I connected it with andrew wylie on that. Its interesting its interesting because when i first met roger, he was going out into the media. Roger is for those who dont know, a veteran venture capitalist. He was a seat and best of lots of big important Tech Companies and he was an early mentor to mark. An elevation at the stake i think was it through elevation . Guest the elevation past and roger invested personally. Host thats right. Roger benefited greatly from it in a way initially that his company did not. Host its interesting. He was out talking against his own book at that stage to the media and saying look, i became concerned pre2016 about what i was seeing on facebook. I felt there was something wrong. He apparently wrote a letter to mark and sugar. This is sort of like your kindly uncle coming to you and say hey, i think were little bit of problem. Apparently according to his telling they went very corporate pr on him very quickly, shut him down. Its hard for me to metabolize how someone can get that information from a trusted figure and not take it seemingly more seriously. In your reporting what conclusion did you come to about this . Guest because facebook really downplayed the degree to which roger was an influence, edited look into this. Its interesting, and i did roger is a more accurate account of the degree of his influence in facebook then maybe some of the media appearances he did. To have him describe this, zuckerberg is main mentor, which i dont think if you get into the wall he wouldnt claim is overblown. I did find some of the stories he tells are true. Facebooks first privacy officer chris told me he did connect roger with mark and he did have a meeting with him when yahoo was trying to buy facebook, and he did have a role but not the sole role but role among others in helping connect Sheryl Sandberg the facebook. But by the time he was complaining he had faded from the picture turkey was not a regular advisor. Basically theyre getting a letter from someone who was maybe important in the early days of facebook but now wasnt someone who they were in close contact with. They felt comfortable sloughing off his concerns to stand rose stand rose to these specific things he was complaining about were under discussion at facebook at facebook it already decided that it was going to not do anything about misinformation that was circulating in 2016. It wasnt a new thing he was bringing up. It was something they already had made that decision, a destructive decision i believe and roger was right to call it out, but it wasnt like roger was sent to something you dont know about. It was something they knew about and already decided not to do think about. Misinformation was happening during the election that by and large help trump and hurt clinton. Host why do you think, i mean, going deep on Sheryl Sandberg, what made them make that decision . Thats a big decision particularly, i dont know if there is never or libertarian liberal or libertarian, to say were not going to think about it . Guest you have to reconstruct the frame of 2016. Three things are happening. With the election on facebook. The first is that trump is using facebook in the way it is supposed to be used, almost better than anyone else has in history. Bosworth mentioned earlier he told me he was in awe of it. This later came out in in a mee should would be during the course of the book that it was beautiful. Essentially the Trump Campaign played Facebook Like a stradivarius, where the clinton people played like a cardboard of banjo you find industry. The Trump Campaign accepted and embed from facebook that help show them the ins and outs of how to use. They made a bigger bet on it and they did thousands of fans every day. Sometimes hundreds of thousands, and whereas the Clinton Campaign did not use well at all. That was part one. Part two was this misinformation. Evil found that they could make money people by circulating fake stories from publication the did exist that made clinton look bad and sometimes criminal like pizzagate were supposedly she was running a child trafficking ring in the pizzeria in washington. That would get people to go to some page where there would be, a financially motivated campaign. And the third was russian involvement. This i dont think have as much exposure to users as the Misinformation Campaign but there were hundreds of thousands of people who saw this stuff and super disturbing that the russians were using facebook to help metal with an election. This sort of unrolled the facebook really late and he really didnt come across it until after the election and we can talk about how they treated it then. The second thing, there was a big debate amid facebook and one time this meeting i described, and weekly meeting and the person really was running that meeting this guy named joel kaplan was ahead of the d. C. Operation, the lobbying operation, and his dna was he was republican. A lot of people in the Washington Office felt that he felt his job was to carry water for the republicans. He had a a very close relationp with cheryl. Used to date are in college. Cheryl was fully back from tough time she had to recover from when her husband died, a terrible tragic situation. She was back then but i think things have shifted where people who took responsibly during that time including kaplan were pretty much operating with more authority and he won the argument that they should really think about the misinformation. He said that would be like tilting the Playing Field to help when candidate by removing misinformation. That was wrong. The idea is that plainfield was tilted by the misinformation and leveling it by taking it out. But he won the day and the rest is history. Host lets talk about the revelations post 2016, the cambridge political scandal. You could deep and that as which was interesting. How did you view all those characters . Guest the Cambridge Analytica was an amazing story in and of itself. I undertook , like a story, the chapters, and was in a way a comedy in some sense of airs on facebooks part but there were like crazy characters involved, and led it to what became the biggest scandal in that narrative in facebooks history. You could argue whether other things that facebook it were more damaging but this is a one to get the most traction. I believe that scandal really happened not in 2018 when it was revealed for 2016 during the election or 2014 when Cambridge Analytica got the information, maybe 78 million Facebook Users, but in 2010 when facebook gave away information about users to developers. That meant when Facebook User signed up to use some survey or an application from a thirdparty that ran on facebook, they would give that developer or the maker not own information of the person who signed up but that persons hold social network, all their friends. You could argue the user signs up for a servant is responsible because the clicks off or she clicks off on some little boilerplate saying going to look at your information i think it would of information on a persons friends had no idea this was happening. People at facebook, again, they complained to zuckerberg. They said this is too much. We shouldnt do this. Zuckerberg went ahead and did that anyway. That api as it is called, the way to dig into facebooks databases opened up in 2010. They close that loophole in 201